When there is a gigantic gap between one player or team and the rest of the competition, comparisons are often made to peak Tiger Woods. The 15-time major title winner decimated the field for a decade, spending an incomprehensible 683 total weeks atop the Official World Golf Ranking. In a sport replete with variables and surprise breakthroughs, he dominated the PGA Tour all yearlong again and again.

Normally, holding any other feat of supremacy next to that of Woods feels hyperbolic, especially in golf. But is a successor finally taking the reins from the last true ruler of the greens? Scottie Scheffler is enjoying a run for the ages that has caused him to be mentioned in the same breath as prime Woods.

After being named PGA Tour Player of the Year in both 2021-22 and 2022-23, the current world No. 1 is posting the best season of his still-young career. He grabbed his second Green Jacket at the 2024 Masters, displaying tremendous poise late in the final round to outlast a worthy group of challengers. That is just the icing on what has been a delicious and aesthetically pleasing cake, though.

Scheffler has five PGA wins in 2024, four additional top-five finishes and has fallen outside the top 10 just once this year. With life-changing news and unexpected ordeals filling up his calendar, he has remained largely imperturbable on the golf course.

Although that aura of invincibility is in jeopardy of incurring a considerable blow at the 2024 U.S. Open (4-over par and nine strokes off lead at time of print), Scheffler's season deserves unique acclaim. Though, the Tiger Woods bar might be set impossibly high for either him or any other great modern player to reach.

Tiger Woods' run stands alone, but Scottie Scheffler is in elite company

“I will say this, there will be some justifiable comparisons to Tiger with Scottie Scheffler in terms of how much he separated himself from his peers,” Golf Channel anchor and reporter Rich Lerner said on The Dan Patrick Show on Thursday afternoon.

“Scottie turns 28 next week. A week before his 28th birthday, Tiger had won 38 times with 8 majors… Scottie's at 11 wins, 2 majors. There's no comparison to Tiger, but Scheffler is dominating this current crop.”

When taking account of the former Texas Longhorn star's consistency, clutch Sunday performances and metrics like strokes gained, it is completely reasonable to stack this version of Scheffler with a top-form Woods, but the mind-boggling duration of the latter's reign of terror makes it difficult to have this conversation right now.

One year does not tell the whole story when it comes to the book of Tiger. His ability to stay comfortably perched on the mountaintop for such an inordinate period of time is what defines his all-time great status. Scheffler has the skills and intangibles to craft a remarkable legacy of his own– he is already well on his way there–, but as the kids say, “there's levels to this.”

While Scottie Scheffler is surely flattered to be juxtaposed with Tiger Woods in most cases, he probably does not want to be held in similar regard as him at the 2024 U.S. Open. At the moment, both players sit at 4-over par (Woods has not started his second round yet) and could be heading for a scenic tour of Pinehurst, North Carolina this weekend instead of their preferred Father's Day plans.